Proving The Value of Twitter

by Jon Bishop on December 11, 2008

in Social Media, Twitter

I am often assigned the task of showing our clients how we use social media as a tool to communicate with others in our industry in real time. I begin with my whole spiel about how Twitter works and how people find us etc.

However nothing compares to a successful real time demonstration of it’s value.

I will usually Tweet something along the lines of “Showing George Migos the value of Twitter. Say Hello!”. Sometimes I’m lucky enough to get a response or two … but what if that response was expected. What if using a hash tag to establish the nature of the Tweet could result in several @replies and direct messages thus instantly showing the real time value Twitter provides.

I know this is a stretch for several reasons. One being that a tweet like this actually provides little to no actual ‘value’ and its unrealistic to normally expect this many responses.

However, I do believe this is a great way to show the potential value Twitter has in real time. Twitter is still a baby in many peoples eyes and as we grow we will become more sophisticated in the aggregation and spreading of information.

So here is what I propose:

Any time you are showing Twitter to anyone (friend, colleague, client), you would post your tweet with the hash tag #sayhi. It’s everyone else’s job to respond to your tweet via @reply or dm. I got to thinking direct messages might be the best mode to avoid cluttering the twitter streams.

It would be wonderful if i could sit down to show a friend Twitter and have 5 to 10 people instantly shout back a “how ya doing”. It would say a lot about the community and might help bring more people into the twitterverse.

So this is an idea I had this morning and had been thinking about most of the day. I would really appreciate any feedback whether it be alternative ideas or ways to expand on my idea.

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